Milton Santos

Santos treated territory not merely as land or administrative borders but as space actively shaped and used by people, institutions, infrastructure, and economic power. The concept helps explain why the same technical networks benefit different groups unequally.

He left Brazil after the 1964 military coup and worked in several countries during a long period of exile. Those experiences strengthened the international and Global South perspective of his writing on cities, dependency, and globalization.

In The Shared Space, Santos analyzes underdevelopment through the coexistence of different economic circuits within cities of poorer countries. He distinguishes an upper circuit tied to capital-intensive modern activity from a lower circuit supporting much of the urban population.

He received the Vautrin Lud Prize in 1994, an honor often described as geography's closest equivalent to a Nobel Prize. He was the first recipient from outside the European and North American core of the discipline.